


sanctuary

by leaxan



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 16:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14023725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaxan/pseuds/leaxan
Summary: Chloe Price will never die.





	sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. This fanfic is a little over two years old, originally i wrote it in Russian, since im not a native English speaker. And today's morning i felt particularly jazzy, so i just translated it to English in one go. By all means it is far from perfect, so I would appreciate any remarks or notes if you have such.

“Max? Are you… are you okay there?”

Blue butterflies fly up the ceiling, shimmering wings sparkle up and slowly melt, turning into nothing but a thick fog, just the moment Max’s eyelashes flick.

Max opens her eyes.

“I count to three and then come in, hear me?”, Chloe makes a weird half sigh half laugh sound and it almost makes Max smile. “Hey?”

The water has already gone cold and Max shivers, hugging her own shoulders. Dim, flickering light of the hotel lamp reminds her of the bright flashlight beams. Pale, cracked tile reminds her of the empty echoing locker rooms. 

_Come out and play._

Max thinks that Chloe should stop pretending to be discreet, that never suited her. She thinks that Chloe should damn better be inside the bathroom by now. The water has gone cold, blue butterflies have disappeared, leaving Max with only regrets and a nasty headache. 

At the back of her eyelids Max can still see green neon lights say DIE. Max remembers Joyce and suddenly regrets are gone, she just feels a bit of hunger. 

When they were leaving Arcadia, Max had no regrets at all. She felt broken, guilty, dead inside, but never regretted her choice. She held Chloe’s warm palm in her hand and that was all that mattered to her.

“You asked for it, Caulfield!”, Max hears behind the door and slides down the bathtub with a smile on her face. Her heart beats so loud, she can hear it right in her head. Light flicks cut through the turbid water, nearly forcing Max to open her eyes again.

_Three, two, one_ , accompanied by the thunder of Max’s heartbeat, blue shadow of Chloe Price’s head casts a gloom over the peaceful bathtub lagoon, blocking the luminescent sun. Max freezes, trying not to breathe.

_Three, two, one_ , cold, as a predatory fish, Chloe’s palm harshly slides up Max’s stomach and stops on her neck. Dour fingers are trying to catch Max’s pulse beat under her thin skin. 

Butterflies are flying right under the water, all around Max’s face, wings are flickering, shining, distracting. _Three, two, one_ , Max’s lungs are exploding, bursting, cracking, and she scares all the butterflies away with one long exhale, lifting herself up from under the water.

“Fucking idiot”, Chloe mutters under her breath and Max realizes that her joke wasn’t at all that good.

They were driving ahead for far too long. Ahead, with no real destination. It seemed to Max as if she would close her eyes, turn the music louder and ask Chloe to speed up, she would leave everything that happened behind. And her past would never catch up. Sometimes Chloe would look at Max, but never ask a single question, and Max kept their solidary silence. Everything was clear. Everything was simple.

They stopped only when they realized that they have no strength left. At all. First place they found was some hotel with a quite mocking name. “Dolphin”. God damned “Dolphin” (Max thought that if it would have been a “Whale”, they would have absolutely drove past it). One bed for two in the cheapest attic room became their sanctuary. 

As soon as they got in, Chloe torn off the dirty gray blanket, revealing the crunchy whiteness of the sheets, and then slept for the entirety of two whole days, with her clothes on. 

Max had nightmares. In them, a giant tornado out of dead jays was carrying a small innocent deer away, tearing her into millions of small blue butterflies. Nathan Prescott, choking on his tears, was begging for forgiveness, smudging handfuls of graveyard dirt all over his face. Drugged and weak, Chloe Price was laying under the light modifiers in the dark room, asking to let her die. 

_I want to die._

No way, thought Max. No way in hell I will leave you again.

Max feels as if she is an hourglass, counting time backwards. Letting a million tiny sand dust frames through in a second. 

“Are you out of your god damned mind?”, Chloe’s voice nervously breaks a second after she says “god damned” so the rest of the phrase comes out almost laughable. Max decides that it is quite justified: at least one time in their life she made Chloe Price understand how it feels.

How it feels, when a person you are ready to kill a whole town for, dies on your hands. And time would have slipped through her fingers if Max wouldn’t have been able to hold it back. 

Build anew. Rewrite it clean.

_I want to die._

“I’m sorry”, Max says quietly, wrapping her fingers around Chloe’s cold palm. “I’m sorry, I just… got lost in thoughts”, she feels a strong need to be back to reality right this second, so she asks: “Are you hungry?”

Chloe suddenly reaches down, takes Max’s wet face in her hands, and then time freezes with no superpowers and nosebleeds involved, because their lips meet in an impatient, warm kiss. Max knows that Chloe usually is a fast, greedy and insensitive kisser, but this kiss comes out differently. Deep and desperate, as if it’s begging for something. Even after Chloe doesn’t let go, pulling Max’s head to her chest, muttering something along the lines of “you are so stupid” and “please don’t you ever die”.

“Oh, come on”, Max tries, but muffled whispering is never the best way to convince anybody. “I won’t die. Do you hear me? Chloe?”

“I know”, Chloe breathes out into Max’s hair. “Dying is my thing”.

Chloe smells like engine oil, sweat and “Pringles Original”, so Max forces her to take a bath right after the drama will be dealt with. So they sit, hugging each other, for around half an hour more. Weirdly enough, Chloe is the first one to notice that water is practically freezing cold by now. 

“Get the hell out of here”, she says, and it somehow comes out gentle. It’s not like Max is shy, but she slouches as usual while standing up and stepping out of the bathtub. Right after making some sudden movements she gets dizzy and her head fills with static noise.

She remembers the sea and the dead whales.

The noise in her head gets replaced with the sound of the splashing: Chloe turned the hot water on, and then Max comes back to the twilight of the room. She is scared to open the door, ever since the last day in Arcadia she feels as if behind every door she would see a long Blackwell’s corridor, filled with candles. 

Thick curtains that kept them safe from sunlight for the last two days are still shut and the room is full of soft, blue darkness. Chloe left the bed messy, but it still looks warm, cozy and inviting.

Max is hungry, but the closest thing to food around is Chloe’s cigarettes. And Max feels no desire to go out of the room and into the tiny shop at the ground floor, so she sits down on the bed and turns the old TV on. They usually broadcast cartoons in the morning.

Max smiles, getting an old “Fantasia” by Disney first try. 

“It’s like nothing had happened, right?”, Chloe throws a wet towel with some blue marks on it on the floor. “It’s like I’m nine again”.

“Uh-huh”, Max answers, unable to say anything reasonable in response.

Mickey Mouse, dressed in a wizard hat is running around behind the thick and dusty TV screen. Max laughs, thinking that this is the exact same way she was running around with her superpowers the whole past week. Behind the camera lens.

That week seems like a whole year. Or maybe two. Or a million years. And the only thing Max misses is a wizard hat.

That last thought almost makes Max sad again, but this right moment Chloe carefully wraps her hands around Max’s stomach. They are hugging tighter: Chloe’s hot breath is on Max’s neck and sometimes Chloe kisses her shoulder.

Max is enjoying the unusual calmness, leaning closer towards Chloe. Chloe. Her fragile, tiny butterfly. Her jay, always ready to fly away. Max turns her head around with a soft smile and lets Chloe kiss her cheek.

She would bury not only the stupid town, but the entire world. She would die from the nosebleed. She would do anything. And will do anything, if it comes down to that. Holding a power over ever changing time, Max is solely sure in one thing only.

Chloe Price will never die.

Max turns around completely, and then they kiss again. Chloe carefully puts her down on the pillows, hanging over her, and blue waterdrops are falling from Chloe’s wet hair. The kisses are gentle, soft and long, as if they haven’t seen each other in years. Max thinks for a second that for Chloe, that lived though it seems like a thousand deaths by now, nothing would be surprising anymore, so she breaths a quiet “I love you” out. 

Chloe’s lips on Max’s neck stop moving and Chloe herself freezes for a moment. And then Max feels relief as Chloe slowly smiles and softly giggles into her skin.

“Always have”, she whispers in response, “Always will”.

Then she says something about “any time” and “any reality”, but Max doesn’t listen, cause she feels so hot and Chloe’s fingers are so nicely cold inside her. 

Blue butterflies are right inside Max’s stomach, their tingly wings are forcing a silly smile out of her. Chloe’s kisses don’t feel bitter anymore, as they felt the day they left the ruined town. For some reason Max hears an old Bon Jovi song in her head and it starts right from the line “I ain’t gonna live forever”. 

Max closes her eyes. 

First sun rays spill some soft yellow shine on the dusty street outside, and the upcoming morning light swallows the orange neon of the lampposts. Somewhere far away a car alarm is whaling. Max doesn’t hear it, though. She falls asleep on Chloe’s warm naked chest, pressing her cheek against it and thinks that someday they both will be able to build something new in return for what they have ruined.


End file.
